1. Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay worked as an ethnologist, anthropologist and biologist who became famous as one of the earliest scientists to settle among and study indigenous people of New Guinea "who had never seen a European".
22 Facts About Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay became a prominent figure of nineteenth-century Australian science and became involved in significant issues of Australian and New Guinea history.
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One of the earliest followers of Charles Darwin, Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay is remembered today as a scholar who, on the basis of his comparative anatomical research, was one of the first anthropologists to refute the prevailing view that the different races of mankind belonged to different species.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay was born in a temporary workers' camp in Borovichi county, Novgorod Governorate in Russia, a son of a civil engineer working on the construction of the Moscow-St Petersburg Railway.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay's Ukrainian father, Nikolai Ilyich Myklukha, was born in 1818, in Starodub, Chernigov Governorate, and descended from Stepan Myklukha, a Zaporozhian Cossack who was awarded the title of noble of the Empire by Catherine II for his military exploits during the Russo-Turkish War, which included the capture of the Ochakov fortress.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay died in December 1857 from tuberculosis and was survived by his wife and five children.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay's godfather was Alexander Ridiger, a Borovichi landowner who was a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812 and a participant in the Battle of Borodino.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay studied humanities at Heidelberg, medicine at Leipzig, and zoology at the University of Jena, where he came under the influence of the great German scholar Ernst Haeckel, who had a profound influence on his future.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay became a close friend of the biologist Anton Dohrn, with whom he helped conceive the idea of research stations while staying with him at Messina, Italy.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay left St Petersburg for Australia on the steam corvette Vityaz.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay married Margaret-Emma, widowed daughter of the Premier of New South Wales, John Robertson.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay's residence, named Wyoming, is in the Sydney suburb of Birchgrove, and is heritage-listed due to its association with him.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay lived in northeastern New Guinea for a two-year period in between 1871 and 1880, from which he visited the Philippines, Malay Peninsula and Australia on a number of occasions.
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Some scientists, such as Ernst Haeckel, a teacher of the young Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay, relegated what they regarded as culturally "backward" people like Papuans, Bushmen and others to the role of 'intermediate links' between Europeans and their animal ancestors.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay was in poor health and, despite treatment from Sergei Botkin, Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay died of an undiagnosed brain tumour at 41 in St Petersburg.
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay was buried in the Volkovo Cemetery and left his skull to the St Petersburg Military and Medical Academy.
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Nicholai Nikolaevich Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay is commemorated in the scientific name of the New Guinea tree species Planchonella maclayana, in the banana species Musa maclayi, and in the land snail species Canefriula maclayiana which were some of the species he discovered.
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The weevil Rhinoscapha maclayi was first collected by Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay and was then named after him by his friend William Macleay.
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The Marine Biological Station in Watson's Bay, built and used by Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay, was commandeered by the Ministry of Defence in 1899 as a barracks for officers.
20.
The Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay Society succeeded in naming a park in his honour in Snails Bay, not far from a house where he lived in Sydney for a time.
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The Macleay Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay Fellowship is available from the University of Sydney each year.
22.
In 2013 a monument to celebrate the legacy of Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay was erected near Bongu village in Madang Province, funded by "Valeria, Irma, and Valentina Sourin, Chief, Sir Peter Barter and volunteers from the Madang Resort and Friends of the Haus Tumbuna".